


Reflections

by starkeeper



Series: Reda Shepard [5]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Ahern's retirement apartment, Earthborn (Mass Effect), F/M, Gen, Intai'sei, Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, Pre-Mass Effect 1, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Tags will be added ongoing, memories of dying in space, pinnacle station
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:55:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24795019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkeeper/pseuds/starkeeper
Summary: A collection of ficlets, prompts and small stuff for Reda Shepard. Will be tagged as added.Chapter 1: Fifteen months after surviving the thresher maw massacre on Akuze, Shepard is confronted with ghosts from her past. (pre-ME1)Chapter 2: Shepard subconsciously remembers dying in space. Garrus tries his best to replace some of the memories with better ones. (ME2)Chapter 3: Shepard doesn't think about retirement, or does she? The crew is in shock. (ME1)
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian, Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Series: Reda Shepard [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/253930
Comments: 11
Kudos: 10





	1. Ghosts from the Past

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbetaed so please excuse any mistakes in it. 
> 
> When I randomly picked names for Shepards old platoon that was killed on Akuze, I happened to write "Adams and Wen". The brain then decided that said Adams obviously was relative to Greg Adams and this is what happened.  
> Follows up the "20 times Akuze almost gets Shepard"-story, which can, but doesn't have to be read before. 
> 
> Please enjoy.

** Ghosts from the Past **

Eigth months after Shepard joins the SSV Tokyo, they get a new chief engineer. Kopecky, who has served on the Tokyo for a couple of years now, eventually applies for a teaching position back on Earth with his wife expecting their first child. Twins, actually. It‘s the watershed for most of them, for the better or worse: family. Having one with extended shoreleave every six months serving on different vessels or even worse in different planetary systems is a crucial test that doesn‘t always work out as well as with Kopecky, but that‘s what everyone knows when they sign up. His successor is a recommendation by both Kopecky himself and Navigator Pressly and is just as qualified for the job, if not better.

For Shepard, he‘s a ghost from the past.

When Gregory Adams reports for duty and enters the Tokyo for the first time, Shepard freezes. It doesn‘t go unnoticed, and at the first opportunity given Adams asks Pressly who that crew member is that looks at him like he was a ghost.  
When he hears her name, for a short moment he freezes as well.

A sleepless night and a day later he plucks up the courage to confront her. Neither of them profits from having this between them and neither of them has a reason to act like this. There‘s nothing between them, he is no ghost and she is not who haunts him at night, and damn, this won‘t get any easier if they keep up the tension. They haven‘t even spoken a word yet.

„Lieutenant Shepard? Do you have a minute?“

She stares at him in response, frozen again, being caught off guard by his approach even though she _knew_ it was coming. She tried to brace herself for it, it had to happen - but she _can_ _‘t_. Seconds pass that feel like hours until she forces herself to nod, stiff, terrified, unable to bring herself to any other kind of reaction. She follows him to the end of the room next to the elevator, where they can go somewhat unnoticed for a couple of minutes, and tries to brace herself for whatever is going to happen.

„I sense we got some kind of situation here“, Adams starts in a neutral tone, looking at the younger woman upfront. „Can you fill me in?“

She tries to give her voice the same steadiness and strength as he had, not have it show any of the two dozen feelings that range in her since she first saw Adams board the Tokyo. But her voice almost crakcs the moment she stutters a response.

„Tab-“ She clears her throat and swallows hard. Tells herself to pull her shit together, but her head is spinning so hard that she feels like she‘s about to pass out. „Are you a relative of Tabby- Tabatha Adams?“

„She was my sister.“

Adams sounds calm and reserved, but his heart beats just as agressively as Shepard‘s. It has taken him a long time to say _was_ instead of _is_ and he‘s still counting, to not expect a call from her every second Sunday as she used to do for ten years. On good days he tells himself he has reached that point by now. But those are seldom. On the Tokyo though, it doesn‘t matter if it‘s good days or bad ones. Here, it is his job. Here, Tabatha is not his sister whom he misses God knows how much. Here, she is just another soldier killed in action. That‘s what happens on the job. That‘s another thing they all signed up for.

„She died on Akuze“, Shepard says, stammers, hardly louder than a whisper but like a slap in the face, and she wants to punch herself the very next second for this flat, most obvious and crude statement that she never intended to make.

Adams holds her gaze, shoulders tense, hands folded behind his back, painfully pleached, but his voice is still calm and steady. „She did.“ He knows she did. There‘s not one second a day when he isn‘t painfully aware of this - but it doesn‘t matter. Not here. Not towards Shepard.

Both stare at each other in silence for a while, until Shepard breaks into a sudden, surpressed and yet most uncontrolled sob, followed by pressing her hand on her mouth like she just said it again. „ _I_ _‘m so sorry._ “

It is the first and the last time she cries about what happened on Akuze in front of somebody, even though it‘s not more than this short glance of a singular emotional outburst. Fifteen months after Tabatha Adams died at the far end of their camp on Akuze, right next to Wen, some dozen feet away from the burning Mako among sand and screams and shaking ground while she watched it - and the moment it breaks out of her couldn‘t be less appropriate. She‘s confronted with a relative of one of her former comrades, one of her _dead_ comrades, and she lacks the decency to have her shit together and act professional enough to at least honour her. Instead, she stands here and cries, begging for pity, begging for forgiveness for a loss that can never be repaired.

Adams looks at her, hands covered in cold sweat, fingers painfully intervined, and just as terrified and heartbroken and lost as Shepard.  
He looks at her and sees the scar tissue that starts under the navy blue fabric of her uniform and makes its way up her neck almost to her left ear, braodly burned skin and a visible reminder for the scars inside her throat and lungs that still make it hard to breath until this day. He looks at her and sees all the scars that aren‘t physical, that aren‘t carved in skin and flesh and that can‘t be located in any part of the body and that are still there, sensible, painful, pulsating. He looks at her and sees the same pain he feels every single day, with every waking minute, every breath he takes and every desperate stubborn beat his heart makes.

And yet he is relieved they are over the hump with this. Because as painful as it is for both of them, he is not the ghost that she fears, and she is not who haunts him at night. She never was. His pain has nothing to do with her.

„None of us blame you“, he says eventually with the same calm and steady voice. Because he doesn‘t. He can‘t. And it wouldn‘t change anything. The tight grip around his hands untightens, as he reaches with one hand for her shoulder and lays it on her heavily. Just as he used to do it with Tabby when they were younger, he thinks and has to close his eyes for a moment. Tabatha is dead. Killed in action. They aren‘t. That‘s what they have to act upon. „No one“ he repeats and hopes she will believe it. Because it is true, but truth doesn‘t matter much in a case like this.

That‘s the nature of scars, as well as of ghosts. They may fade, but they never leave.


	2. Memories carved into flesh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr prompt: Helping scratch that itch on their back they can’t reach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Filling in a prompt by guileandgall - you made me slightly emotional with this one. Thank you! It was fun to write!

When Shepard reaches for the back of her neck, people close to her notice it. Most of the times it‘s no conscious movement of her, and the moment usually passes without her being aware of it. The same isn‘t true for everyone else though.

To Joker the instinctive gesture is a constant reminder of the guilt that‘s weighing heavy on every cell of his very being. If it was some real physical weight being added every time she does so, every bone in his fragile body would have been shattered into pieces by now. But this weight is different, this pain is different, the memory is different, and he is not the one shattered to pieces.  
He is just the only one who saw her dying.  
He watched her drift away from the burning remains of the Normandy, pushed into space by an explosion that kept her away from the last escape pod. His final impression of her is one of how her hand reaches for the backside of her helmet, her body starting to twist unnaturally, and then…  
Every time her hand reaches for the back of her neck, lost in thoughts, caused by nothing more than a distant tingling itch on her skin that leads her hand, he is reminded of the debt he owes her for the rest of his life - and for two of her own.

To Dr. Chakwas this gesture is one of the few indicators for the Commander‘s wellbeing. The scars on the backside of Shepard‘s neck are the ones that never properly heal after Cerberus brings her back from the dead. The level of redness on the skin around them is a clear indicator for how stressed Shepard is, even when there‘s not a single word of complain. Shepard was never one to care for pain, much less to whine about it. That is much to Chakwas‘ regret, because more often than not she isn‘t even aware of any issues until it‘s almost too late. So the post-mission routine checkup serves quite well in showing how Shepard is dealing with everything, and it doesn‘t need any words.

One of the first moments Garrus remembers after joining them back on the new Normandy is how Dr. Chakwas asks Shepard to stop scratching her skin for a while and let it heal - considering Shepard‘s annoyed reaction that talk doesn‘t happen for the first time. Garrus doesn‘t pay much attention at first - Shepard seems fine for someone who was dead for over a year, and a little bit of irritated skin can‘t be such a big deal.  
He soon learns to pay attention to it, and how it‘s not just some scratched skin after all.  
They become a well-functioning team the moment he is back on his own two feet, just like in old times, the rocket in his face being nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Just like having been dead seems to be nothing else for Shepard, a minor inconvenience, inconvenient mostly for all the random _I thought you were dead-_ comments everyone throws at her. But he knows how very misleading that impression is.  
He learns to pay attention to all the little things she does unconsciously, like scratching her neck when tension builds up. The closer they grow, the more he tries to discreetly intervene, to break up some of these subconscious patterns and replace them with something else. Something… better. At some point his timing is good enough that his hand reaches for her neck before her own does, gently rubbing her skin, drawing circles with soft pressure instead of leaving red traces of nervous scratching behind. When her hand instinctively reaches for her neck and meets his for the first time, she shoots him a questioning, mildly irritated look. His hand lifts, leaving it to her how to react. But instead of pushing him away, her fingers pull him back, leaving that part of her body to his care while she carries on with what she was doing.

It‘s a feeling both of them didn‘t know they needed, him having her back again, both metaphorically speaking and in a very literal way.

It might not be a conscious movement, when Shepard‘s hand reaches the backside of her neck. But it is one when Garrus‘ does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Feedback is much appreciated. :) (As are prompts! Both here and on tumblr.) (Also I have no idea why it also shows the end notes from chapter one here? Huh.)


	3. Retirement Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard does not think about retirement, or does she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a silly little something that came to my mind when I finally beat Pinnacle Station in ME1. I really like the apartment on Intai'sei but not the way Shepard gets to it, so have a different version of that here.

** Retirement Plans **

„You‘re going to eat that, Skip?“

Without looking up from the data pad, Shepard pushed her food tray in Ashley‘s direction.

„I didn‘t mean to-“

„Help yourself.“ She was done with lunch break, and whatever Emmerson had conjured as a dessert here didn‘t catch much of her attention.

Kaidan couldn‘t help but laugh. „In another life you should rethink your life choices and go for culinary school, Ash.“

„Why wait for another life? Hector sure could use some help there feeding all these mouths.“

„You criticising my skills, Moreau?“ Emmerson yelled from the far end of the mess.

„Not by any means, Sir!“ Joker replied formally. Bringing up the ship‘s chef against oneself would only do some serious harm, so he wasn‘t going to make any stupid mistakes on that end. „The amount of food Gunnery Chief Williams scoffs is a clear indicator for your skills.“

„I better hope so! That girl‘s the only reason I get up every morning.“

Emmerson was a shameless flirt but never overstepped any boundaries in it. Being the oldest crew member and indeed an excellent chef, everyone let him pass one or another comment. Ashley threw him a short grin, then dedicated herself to the cake Shepard had ceded to her.

„While that‘s sorted, what are your plans for retirement? With Ashley obviously filling in Hector‘s shoes.“

„Am I?

„Are you?“

„There‘s no such thing as retirement in the Flotilla“ Tali thought loudly. „But I hope I will live to see the day my people are returning to Rannoch.“

„Thinking about your dream house already?“ Garrus said with a soupcon of humour.

„What about you, Shepard?“

„Not planning to retire“ she mumbled dryly, not looking up from the data pad in her hands. Even while everyone else was eating, she took just a quarter of the time and kept working in the rest of it.

„But if you did? Theoretically?“

„Got some property on Intai‘sei. For retirement. So that‘s _theoretically speaking_ , because I‘m not retiring.“

Her words weren‘t more than a passing mention on her side but had everyone else at the table stop mid sentence.

„You got _property_?“ Joker echoed. „As in...“

„House, land, stuff like that.“ She couldn‘t sound less interested.

„ _Stuff like that??_ “

„Never been there.“

„You own property that you‘ve never seen?“ Now it was Garrus who disbelievingly checked on it.

„Yep.“

„Why have you never been there?“

„How long do you have it?“

„About what kind of property are we talking here, Skipper?“

It was only now that Shepard looked up from the report she was reading. „Sorry?“

„You dropped quite a bomb here, Commander“ Kaidan said. „Now you gotta feed us some more information there, okay?“

Shepard frowned, not really understanding the fuzz that suddenly happened. „It‘s an investment, I was advised to make it, I‘m not planning to retire so I have not been there yet. It‘s just placing monthly paychecks _somewhere_. I will never use it anyways and probably sign it over to someone, okay?“

„Like _whom_?“

Shepard wasn‘t known to be someone with a whole lot of family or close friends or relatives of any sort. And she sure wasn‘t one to start a family of her own very soon either.

„ _Somebody_ , okay? Why are you so excited about this? And more importantly“ - she was side-eyeing Kaidan and Ashley - „why didn‘t _you_ follow the investment plans we were given?“ Everyone of them had been advised in their first year already to invest their salary early into some kind of property somewhere, be it Earth, Citadel or somewhere else. And Shepard didn‘t need a lot of what she earned, so she hadn‘t thought about it very long and just signed up for something that looked somewhat promising.

They ignored her question and tried to squeeze some more information about the where and what and when and how of the fact that Shepard suddenly was the only home-owner at the table. Especially because of her outstanding work ethic none of them expected _her_ to be the one to talk about and make investments and planning retirement and all. They kept throwing questions at her, but Shepard just shook her head and concentrated on the report on some geth attacks in the Armstrong Nebula again.

„Where was your property?“

„Intai‘sei.“

„Where‘s-“

„Argos Rho.“

„We should go there.“ Tali sounded seriously excited.

Shepard would prefer her and the rest of them showing the same kind of determination on their actual jobs, not on bugging her with senseless questions on senseless what if topics.

„We‘re not on a vacation ride.“

„But in case we‘re ever in the same area...“

„Guys, that settlement probably isn‘t even done with construction yet. So would you please-“

„ _Settlement_?? You were talking about a house and some land and now you‘re saying you own a whole settlement?“

„What?! I-“ Shepard grimaced when she looked up. „What the - guys! There‘s geth, okay??“ She gestured wildly at her data pad. „Can you concentrate on that maybe? Of course I don‘t fucking own a city or something, okay? It‘s a goddamn flat in a yet to build - I - ugh. Really. Get a life.“

„Or some property“ Joker chaffed.

Shepard pushed her chair back and shook her head. Aimed at Joker she said „See you in the helm in five minutes.“

„Aye, Commander.“

She could still hear them tattle about _Shepard_ and _house_ and _unbelievable_ , while she made her way from the mess up to the CIC.

Not that she ever really thought about actively retiring, was she? That surely wasn‘t how she would end her days, rusting in some puffy big bed in a flat of her own on some random stupid planet.

Retirement.

Madness.

Shepard snorted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked it. :D

**Author's Note:**

> As always: Thanks for reading, enjoying, leaving kudos and comments, it is extremely much appreciated. <3


End file.
